Editor’s note: This article is an update to the Overview of the Sources of Italian Law. There are numerous additions, changes for some Web site addresses, as well as some deletions. These additions and changes are indicated by (yellow background color) for easy identification.

Among the countless inconveniences of the Italian Legal System, the one I focus on is the overly complex categorization of legal sources mandated by our Constitution.

This problem is the topic of the book, Le Fonti del Diritto, by Prof. Maurizio Pedrazza Gorlero, PADUA CEDAM, 1995, ISBN: 88-13-19155-3. And of this good website, which is in Italian. Those who cannot read Italian, and are not interested in theoretical details, can make use of this article.

To understand this schema, it is essential to read the Italian Constitution; the up-to-date online Italian version is here (in four languages: Italian, English, French and Spanish).

As the Italian Constitution has undergone major updates in the Y2K, it is mandatory to get a fresh copy. The one (http://www.uni-wuerzburg.de/law/it00000_.html) I am quoting several articles from is stale, but all the articles quoted are OK.

Article 10 of the Italian Constitution states that the Italian Legal System, although dualistic, abides by the general principles of International Law; even the Constitution is overruled by them.

The Constitution Kernel in the above schema is the set of the articles recognizing basic human rights, the Republican form, and protecting the Constitution from abusive amendments.

It is not easy to determine which articles belong to such a kernel [luckily our Constitution framers did not dare write an operating system]; legal doctrine says that Article 139, which says that Italy cannot stop being a [democratic] republic, is the bootstrap, and all articles that complete the definition of “democratic republic” (Articles 1 to 54), plus the one that regulates the passing of amendments (Article 138) comprise the kernel.

Among the kernel articles, Article 7 is of paramount importance, since it dictates that the relationships between the legal systems of Italy and the Roman Catholic Church should be regulated by Lateran Treaty, which can therefore override any piece of Italian legislation, except the kernel.

European Union legislation can take two forms: regulations and directives; as a general rule, European regulations are self-enforcing, while directives only push national Parliaments to enact appropriate legislation.

Since the Italian Parliament is a real laggard in turning EU directives into laws, and EU legislation is extremely pervasive, it is de rigueur to check whether a relevant directive has been enacted in Italy yet – if not, you may consider suing Italy in the European Court of Justice under the Francovich doctrine.

No problem should arise in identifying non-kernel Constitution articles, so I only say how the unconstitutionality of a statute is verified in Italy.

Unlike the USA, in which every court is allowed to ignore unconstitutional statutes (and to impose its opinion to lower courts through the stare decisis principle), every Italian Court dubious about the constitutionality of a relevant statute has to refer the case to a specialized tribunal, the Italian Constitutional Court.

After the Constitutional Court rules about the constitutionality of the statute, the “judex a quo – referring court” can decide the original case; if the Constitutional Court ruling is against the statute (i.e., the statute is deemed unconstitutional per se or can only be saved by proper construction), it is also binding for all other courts.

This procedure does not apply to violations of European Union directives: as the European Court of Justice repeatedly deprecated it, every Italian Court is now entitled to nullify conflicting national laws.

About other international treaties and their rank among legal sources, the Italian Constitution is all but clear (see Articles 10 and 11), and three doctrinal opinions have therefore sprung:

The traditional doctrine (followed by the Italian Constitutional Court in a 1964 decision) does not recognize any pre-eminence of laws enacting international treaties over subsequent laws, which could therefore infringe treaties without remedy;

Another doctrine is inspired by the customary international law principle “Pacta sunt servanda – Deals are to be observed” and therefore infers that international treaties always overrule subsequent conflicting laws;

A third opinion considers laws enacting international treaties as peculiarly resistant to repealing, and therefore subsequent conflicting laws have to buckle under their force; the argument rests on Article 11, which allows Italy to concede part of its sovereignty for the sake of world peace – and subduing its legal system to the binding force of a treaty is a concession of sovereignty.

I am sorry for reporting an excerpt of the Italian doctrinal debate, but it was unavoidable since no clear winner appears among these opinions; although the Italian Constitutional Court followed the first opinion in 1964, it might change its mind in the future.

An extremely incomplete list of treaties Italy has access to is here; the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs is displaying some interesting documents here, but hardly any are international treaties – so you’d better resort to other online resources.

Only some splinters of Italian Legislation are online, free, and up-to-date at the same time, so I’d better focus on what is available offline now.

The most renowned collection of Italian Statutes, used by nearly everybody that could afford it, is Le Leggi d’Italia, a 60 volume looseleaf collection published by De Agostini Giuridica.

Statutes are grouped by topic, which are in turn alphabetically arranged; the binding is robust, and its retail price in Italy is about 7 Million Lire (3,615.20 Euro), VAT included.

Updates are issued monthly, but their price is unpredictable as it varies with the size of each issue.

The publisher also offers a full gamut of legal databases, like:

Leggi d’Italia [Italian Legislation]: the De Agostini’s flagship product, as it features:

Nearly every national statute passed since 1860, in the current text

Case law as per the major Court decisions since 1980, linked to the relevant statutes;

Legal doctrine, as necessary to elucidate statutes;

An “historical archive” featuring the original texts of updated or repealed statutes, since 1989, alas.

Codici d’Italia [Italian Codification]: the seven major Italian Codes, together with appropriate cases and doctrine:

Codice Civile [Civil Code]

Codice Penale [Criminal Code]

Codice di Procedura Civile [Civil Procedure Code]

Codice di Procedura Penale [Criminal Procedure Code]

Codice della Navigazione [Code of Maritime Law]

Codice Militare di Pace [Code of Military Justice for Peacetime]

Codice Militare di Guerra [Code of Military Justice for Wartime]

Prassi delle Leggi d’Italia [Complements to Italian Legislation]: a wide collection of bylaws and regulations issued by the National Government Departments and Divisions to implement the legislation they are supposed to enforce;

Leggi Regionali d’Italia [Italian Regional Legislation]: a database of the laws of the 20 Italian Regions and of the Autonomous Provinces of Trento and Bolzano, interwoven with applicable case law and National or European Union Legislation.

All such databases (but the last) are available on CD-ROM, DVD-ROM (for Win or Mac) and online; “Diritto Comunitario e dell’Unione Europea” is only available on CD-ROM. But customers of the offline edition of all databases can receive online updates through this page, and who considers buying either an online subscription or an offline database can get a demo here.

Other publishers have done their best to match De Agostini Giuridica, and their works deserve serious consideration, as their legal books are among the best in Italy. Here are their legal databases:

CD Juris Data Giurisprudenza, a collection of syllabi of major Italian Courts and doctrine articles; those who need the full text of the decisions of the Corte Suprema di Cassazione should consider buying:

Minerva.org claims to have the most extensive collection of Italian Legislation passed since 1923; only part of it is online, but its website also allows registered users to request offline or paper material. Fees are proportional to its size.

A Library specializing in Italian Law should also subscribe to the Gazzetta Ufficiale, our official journal, published by the Istituto Poligrafico e Zecca dello Stato – but as even Italian subscribers experience egregious postal delays, don’t hold your breath.

The Gazzetta Ufficiale subscription rates are here; be careful, as you may not pay with a credit card, or through a bank transfer, but only via an International Postal Giro. Since 1994, a CD-ROM with the previous year’s worth of the journal is published yearly and sold at these prices – a good opportunity to reclaim shelf space.

Giuritel comprises all issues of the Gazzetta Ufficiale, including those not yet printed, from New Year Day 1987, plus the consolidated text of the most important statutes still in force (like the Civil and Criminal Codes, several “Testi Unici – Restatements”, and so on) and of the most important international treaties Italy has access to.

Italgiure premiered in 1969 and purports to be the ultimate Italian Legal Database, since it contains the whole Italian Legislation, updated, and all the sentences of the Italian Supreme Courts straight from the horse’s mouth. It is not just for lawyers, but the electronic tool used by Italian Supreme Court Justices themselves!

Both databases can be queried using an IBM 3270 Terminal Emulator or a Web interface; but the most outdated feature of these online services is their stiff subscription fees, which are detailed here (for Giuritel) and there (for Italgiure): you can choose between a high flat fee and low minute/byte rates and vice versa, and Giuritel even offers bulk discounts (i.e., you can get multiple user IDs at a discount rate), but they are too expensive anyway for a non-professional.

The Italian Parliament has begun putting Italian legislation online; this page allows you to search or browse bills and acts discussed or passed since May 1996.

Useful portals are:

Normeinrete [Statutes-online]: through this portal you may search or browse all legislation the government departments and offices have made available for free on their websites. It is still a fledgling resource, as the list of contributors is quite short yet, but it may become extremely useful.

The Italian newspapers most devoted to economics and finance have begun creating online legal sites, either for free or for profit; although they are not a replacement for specialized databases, they may still be useful for students and professionals. A student at Faculty of Law of the University of Trento has written a dissertation on them, and the best sites listed there seem:

The best online legal daily seems Diritto & Giustizia (subscription prices here), published by Giuffré. I advise subscribing to the weekly paper supplement too, as it gives some doctrinal comments and insights on the evolution of Italian Law.

Some Italian Universities and research institutes are putting online the most relevant legal material, and here is a brief list of their efforts:

There are also some free sites featuring the latest issues of the Gazzetta Ufficiale, like:

The Comune di Jesi, which hosts an incomplete, but useful version of the last two years of the Gazzetta Ufficiale here; its incompleteness is partially amended by a request form (http://www.comune.jesi.an.it/MV/menu_gazzettaufficiale.htm) that allows Internauts to request the putting online of a missing statute. As this activity is just a labour of love, please, don’t trust the Comune di Jesi’s compliance too much.

The Supreme Court of Cassation vacates and remands illogical, inconsistent or illegal sentences, and thus enforces uniformity in construing Italian law; many of its sentences are published by legal periodicals and even online sites (among them, this, maintained by the Ministry of Justice), but the only way to get all of them is to subscribe to resources like the aforenamed Italgiure database, which lists all sentences in full, or the other above listed databases.

The Council of State gives advice to the national government, and is the court of last resort for administrative suits; its website is cool, but you’d better also look for other sites specialized in public law. A good one is Giust.it (kept by the Istituto Poligrafico e Zecca dello Stato and accessible with a subscription), and lots of them can be found using a search engine, as such sentences affect the lives and trades of many people.

The State Auditors’ Department has to endorse some government acts, oversees the proper allocation and spending of public funds, and tries public officials charged with squandering or embezzling them; here is its website, accessible for free.

All such acts are pieces of national legislation, and of equal value, as they can override or repeal each other; but an important difference is to be kept in mind if you undertake serious legal research:

A “Legge” (shortened as “L.”) is discussed and passed by the Parliament, and is usually effective from the 15th day after approval until repealed (see also Articles 70 to 74 of the Constitution);

A “Decreto Legge” (shortened as “D. L.”) is passed by the Government to address a serious contingency; it is effective from the day after its issue, but should last just three months unless the Parliament converts it into a “Legge” (see also Article 77 of the Constitution);

A “Decreto Legislativo” (often shortened as “D. Lgs.”) is an usually complex statute passed by the Government after a “Legge” has instructed it to do so (see Article 76 of the Constitution).

The only problem with the “Leggi” is that the Italian Parliament is becoming increasingly lazy, and therefore, when passing a new bill, it often leaves it to the reader to determine which statutes have been implicitly superseded by the new one.

Greater problems are posed by the “Decreti Legge“: the Government resorts to them very, very often, and in the last two decades it often reissued the “Decreti Legge” the Parliament had not been able to convert in time.

So, if you are so unlucky as to undertake research about a “Decreto Legge“, you should:

Get the “Decreto Legge” you need;

Check whether it was the renewal of an expired one; although such renewals were often nicknamed “reprints”, “xerocopies” and so on, they often feature slight variations in order to avert a reproach by the Italian Constitutional Court;

Check whether it was finally turned into a “Legge“, or renewed by another “Decreto Legge“, or remitted because the Government realized that the Parliament could not be pressured further;

Don’t forget to get the “Legge” it was converted into: as the Parliament is allowed to amend the “Decreto Legge” as it sees fit (you can think to a “Decreto Legge” as a bill provisionally effective), the “Legge” and the “Decreto Legge” are often quite different – to the befuddlement of Italian Lawyers too.

“Decreti Legislativi” should be a simpler case: when the Parliament recognizes that a badly needed statute is too complex to be issued by itself, it invites the Government to make it by passing a “Delega Legislativa” which states how the new statute should be written, and its deadline.

The Government can ignore the request, but if it accepts it, it has to write the statute and pass it within deadline, like a good attorney drafting a will or a contract or a trust.

But it has already happened that the Government acted “ultra vires – beyond the scope of the Delega Legislativa“, and the ensuing “Decreto Legislativo” was therefore deemed unconstitutional.

So, when looking for a “Decreto Legislativo“, don’t forget to look for the corresponding “Delega Legislativa” (or “Deleghe Legislative“, as there may be more than one); moreover, don’t forget that the “Delega Legislativa” often allows the Government to directly amend the “Decreto Legislativo” in the first six months after its passing, in order to solve “teething problems” and the like.

You may wonder whether such “Decreti Legislativi” are worth their while, and I admit that I am afraid not. In 1989 the current Criminal Procedure Code was passed as a “Decreto Legislativo” and hailed as the showcase of contemporary Italian doctrine and legislative craft … but just a few months later the Constitutional Court struck down a dozen of its articles as unequitable and unreasonable – in a word, conflicting with Article 3 of the Constitution.

Laws can rule directly, or trust the Government to issue a “Regolamento” in order to indicate how they should be enforced, or how citizens should ask for what they are entitled to.

“Regolamenti” have the advantage that the Government can be swifter than the Parliament in updating them according to advances in technology, but they cannot always be used: some legal matters are reserved to Laws, and most “Regolamenti” had to be authorized by a specific Law.

“Regolamenti” are published in the Gazzetta Ufficiale; so any online or offline resource based upon it should contain them; the Italian Government has also devoted a section of its website to them and, since the Corte dei Conti has to imprint every instance of Government regulation, it might eventually decide to list them on its website.

A “Regolamento” may belong to one of these categories, hierarchically arranged:

“Decreto del Presidente della Repubblica – D. P. R.“

“Decreto del Presidente del Consiglio dei Ministri – D. P. C. S.“

“Decreto Interministeriale – D. I.“

“Decreto Ministeriale – D. M.“

“Circolare“

The first kind, the “Decreto del Presidente della Repubblica“, is the most common kind, and unlike the others it prevails on, does not usually require prior authorization by a Law.

“Circolari” are not regulations proper: they are simply directions issued by the competent Ministry to its employees, and they affect the public at large to the extent civil servants comply with them.

Toscana – its legislation (historical texts, i.e., when a statute is amended, the original statute is not updated, but you will find the amending one too – so you may have to spend some time reconstructing the current text of the statutes you have found);

Le Leggi Regionali, accessible for free; its only drawback is that it has only begun operating [collecting legislation] in the fourth quarter 2000. Older statutes must be sought elsewhere.

Regional legislation comprises:

The “Statuto“;

“Leggi“;

“Regolamenti“.

The “Statuto” is more similar to the charter of a colony incorporated by Royal Decree than to the Constitution of an U.S. state, but it constrains regional legislation.

Regional “Leggi” are a tricky part of Italian Law, as they are usually intertwined with National legislation; in most cases, a national statute frames the legal principles regional laws are supposed to enact – and often provides a default regulation in case regions fail to meet the deadline for updating their legislation.

Such a National law is called “Legge Cornice” or “Legge Quadro” (“Frameset Statute”), but I prefer comparing it to a tune a class of organists or jazz players is asked to improvise on: everybody can play their melody, to the extent that it can be music legally derived from the tune (and if the players go beyond the rules of musical variation, the master is allowed to scrap their tunes, reproach the players or even punish them).

This means that it is good practice, when retrieving a regional “Legge“, to also fetch the “Frameset Statute” it refers to, if any.

Regional “Regolamenti” are the counterpart of government regulations, but they are rarely used now.

Italian Trade Unions, although crestfallen, are still much more powerful than their American counterparts, and the contracts they sign can be considered a bona fide legal source in Italy. Let’s see how.

As Article 36 of the Italian Constitution states the worker’s right to adequate pay; when Italian judges had to determine how much money makes a salary adequate, they almost invariably referred to the collective contracts signed by the unionized colleagues of the plaintiffs – thus making such collective bargains the measure of the minimum salary every worker is entitled to, whatever his trade union affiliation.

Collective bargains (which obviously deal with much more than pay) are no less layered than any other field of Italian legislation, and their hierarchy can be sketched as such:

National Legislation does not just mean “Italian Statute Law”, as not only has Labour Case Law become a respectable legal source in Italy, but also because some European Union Directives (like the 93/104/EC [Italian Text – English Text]) can be enacted either by the Parliaments of the Member States, or through agreements between employers’ and workers’ associations.

The agreements European Union Legislators must have thought to must have been the “Accordi Interconfederali “, which bind all workers’ unions and employees’ associations from before the 1957 Treaty of Rome – and have often been translated into law by the Parliament in order to remove all doubt about their effectiveness.

While the “Accordi Interconfederali” are supposed to restate the basic rules of the game and to address the concerns of all workers, whatever their trade, the “Contratti collettivi di categoria ” are devoted to the needs of peculiar industries – among them salary, which cannot be effectively bargained for at the national level.

The “Contratti collettivi” are usually nationwide agreements; but since every industry has thriving and failing firms, and even healthy firms have their peculiarities, the different needs of each firm are addressed by the “Contratti integrativi aziendali “.

Most Italian workers are content with what collective bargaining gives them, but some deserve or strive for more, and their individual deals with their employers are called “Contratti individuali di lavoro“.

This hierarchy is important because the lower layers cannot grant the worker LESS than it is granted by the higher layers, both in pay and other guarantees; as regards labour-legal research, it is obvious that the most reliable sources about individual deals are either the workers themselves or their employers – but searching for higher level agreements is a completely different matter.

There are several paper and CD-ROM works devoted to such contracts, like:

TUTTOLAVORO, by Indicitalia, which contains not only labour contracts, but also all statute law, case law and regulations relevant to the subject;

The 369th piece of legislation passed in 1993, on September, 17th (published on the 221st issue [Sptember, 20th] of the Gazzetta Ufficiale), converted as amended into the 461st Law of 1993 in November 15th (published in the 272nd issue of the Gazzetta Ufficiale [November, 19th]).

The 58th piece of legislation passed in 1998, on February, 24th, as per the articles 8 and 21 of the 52nd Law of 1996, passed on February, 6th.

“Decreto Legislativo” – alternative format

D. Lgs 19 feb. 1998, n. 51 – [rubric] (G. U. 20 mar., n. 66, Supp.)

The 51st piece of legislation passed in 1998, on February, 19th (published in the Supplement to the 66th issue of the Gazzetta Ufficiale, on March, 20th)

Decreto del Presidente della Repubblica

D. P. R. 6 nov. 1960, n. 1926 – [rubric] (G. U. 22 lug. 1961, n. 180)

The 1926th piece of legislation passed in 1960, on November, 6th (published on the 180th issue of the Gazzetta Ufficiale of the following year, on July, 22nd, 1961)

Legge Regionale

Legge Regionale N. 26 del 15-10-1997 Regione Sardegna

The 26th piece of Sardinian legislation passed in 1997, on October, 15th, 1997.

All examples above are real; the tag [rubric] represents the statute caption, which has been dropped.

You may also make a library research by using a less complete citation: for instance, in lieu of “L. 2 ott. 1997 n. 333 – [rubric] (G. U. 4 ott., n. 232)” (the first entry in the above table), you could only ask for the “L. 1997/333”, and if your copy is in a database, it should be enough.

About the Italian date format, the most common one (even in computing) is: dd/mm/yy (or dd/mm/yyyy). Therefore, using the American format (mm/dd/yy or mm/dd/yyyy) will almost certainly cause bothersome and costly misunderstandings.

The best safeguard is to use the month’s name in lieu of its number, at least on letters, cheques and forms; English names are well understood, but if you have to read an Italian date, this table should help you:

Even though I tried to avert doctrinal debates and to spare you the subtleties an Italian legal professional must be privy to, I was not entirely successful, and could not prevent this article from being longer than expected.

But writing it has taught me lots of useful things I would have otherwise overlooked – and I hope that your reading this article will be no less stimulating than my writing it.

Among the several people I wish to thank, two deserve a mention:

Lyonette Louis-Jacques, probably the most renowned Law Librarian on the Net, as I learned a lot of things by taking her challenges (i.e., answering her requests for legal material);

Mario Marigo, my Professor of Forensic Medicine, as he gave me a good grade (28/30 – 4.667/5.000) for carrying out a Net search on Italian Medical Ethics that amazed him.

Comments and critics can be directed here, and even corrections of language mistakes are welcome (Italians are extremely picky about their native language, and I see no reason to deal with foreign languages otherwise).

Sabrina is also Researcher/Author of
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